Sadly, I don't think a study like that is likely to happen. How many families are willing to have someone hang around in their house 24/7 in order to monitor t

Sadly, I don't think a study like that is likely to happen. How many families are willing to have someone hang around in their house 24/7 in order to monitor their child's viewing habits? How many research institutions can afford such a thing? As far as drawing conclusions, I'm not sure it's necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Self-reporting does tend to be inaccurate in terms of absolute numbers. But as long as it tends to be accurate in relative terms - that is, that if people who say their child watches more TV tend to have children who actually do watch more TV - then we can draw relative conclusions. And the key takeaway points from this paper are still useful information even when you take the absolute numbers involved with a grain of salt. Simply knowing that TV viewing time is positively correlated with behavioral problems may not be a crystal-clear picture of the situation, but it's still useful knowledge for a parent.